


Two to a bed

by Lobelia321



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-09
Updated: 2006-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:12:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney gets the shakes.  And then John does, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two to a bed

**Author's Note:**

> What is an [anglepoise lamp](http://www.objectlessons.org/ol/upload/images/A37347_m.jpg)? Thanks: To my betas, [](http://isiscolo.livejournal.com/profile)[**isiscolo**](http://isiscolo.livejournal.com/) for making me think and rewrite, and [](http://phineasjones.livejournal.com/profile)[**phineasjones**](http://phineasjones.livejournal.com/) for giving me the courage to post.

_**FIC: "Two to a bed" SGA**_  
Two to a bed  
by Lobelia  
lobelia40@yahoo.com  
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis  
Pairing: John Sheppard / Rodney McKay  
Spoilers: Series 2, episode 14. 'Grace under Pressure.'  
Rating: NC-17.  
Length: 2,643  
Feedback: Yes, please. Anything at all, one line, one word even. :-)  
Author's Notes: What is an [anglepoise lamp](http://www.objectlessons.org/ol/upload/images/A37347_m.jpg)? Thanks: To my betas, [](http://isiscolo.livejournal.com/profile)[**isiscolo**](http://isiscolo.livejournal.com/) for making me think and rewrite, and [](http://phineasjones.livejournal.com/profile)[**phineasjones**](http://phineasjones.livejournal.com/) for giving me the courage to post.

Summary: Rodney gets the shakes. And then John does, too.

  
\----

John had seen Rodney panicked before. He'd seen him scared, alarmed, catatonic, terrified and paralyzed. He'd seen him yellow with fear, green with nausea, and red with urgency.

He'd never seen him like this.

When Rodney staggered out of the back of the puddle jumper, he looked halfway normal. As much as anyone could look normal after having been trapped in the back of a drowned space ship under thousands of fathoms of ocean. It wasn't until they'd re-engaged flight power and swooshed out of the sea into the blue, blue sky that Rodney began to be gripped by the serious shakes.

"Rodney?" John said, hands on the controls and eyes darting back into the bulkhead. "You okay?"

But no, he wasn't okay. His face was deathly pale. He was staring at the clouds outside, at the horizon curving across the windshield, but his pupils were small wild dots, as if he wasn't really seeing any of these things.

"Here, Zelenka, put her on auto for a minute." John scrambled across gear sticks and bags to crouch down in front of Rodney. "Hang in there, McKay," he said. "You'll be fine."

There was an unfamiliar chattering sound. It took John a second to realise what it was: Rodney's teeth clicking against each other.

"You're freezing, that's all," John said. "You're sopping wet. Zelenka, where do they keep that silver foil?"

But even with the silver foil wrapped around his frame, Rodney didn't stop shivering.

"She was right," he kept muttering. "She was right. You did come to save me."

"Who do you mean, she?" said John.

But Rodney just looked at him with that haunted look in his eyes and didn't reply.

***

The infirmary was full of other people, coughing and throwing up into plastic bags attached to the sides of their beds. John could understand why Rodney didn't want to stay there. He could also understand why Rodney would want to be walked back to his own quarters, and why he might need to stand in the corridor in his slippers and hospital gown, waiting for John to open the door for him.

"Could you," said Rodney, and his voice sounded so odd, so non-Rodney, as if someone had squeezed the life out of it and left only this thin thread of vocalisation, "maybe stay here a while?"

"Sure," John said. "Sure."

Rodney fell down onto his bed and just lay there on his back. He stared up at the ceiling. Then he turned sideways and stared at the opposite wall. John stood around, irresolutely curling and uncurling his hands.

"It's dark," said Rodney.

"Yeah. Yeah, it's dark. We've been in the infirmary a long time. And the debriefing, it's been a few hours. Yeah."

"No," said Rodney. It came out 'n...n...n...no.' "I mean, it's dark in here."

John beamed a thought at the lighting fixtures and a yellow glow flooded the room.

Rodney shut his eyes.

"Sorry," said John. He dimmed the lights, then dimmed them a bit more. Rodney didn't move. He also didn't open his eyes. Maybe he could sense the light through his closed lids.

The city hummed beneath John's soles. A fan whirred in the depths of the ceiling, then clicked itself off. Somewhere, someone dropped something with a faint thud.

John looked at Rodney. He wasn't used to seeing Rodney like this. He wasn't used to hearing Rodney like this. He wasn't used to not hearing Rodney.

He hunkered down next to the bed. "Rodney?" he said softly.

No response.

"Rodney?" He touched Rodney on the shoulder. Rodney half-opened his eyes.

"Hm?"

"Sorry, I thought you were asleep. Listen, I'd better let you get some rest. Also, I want... You sure I can't get you something?"

"No, no." 'N...n...n...no.' Rodney shook his head.

John crouched there, looking at Rodney. Rodney's shoulder trembled under his hand. The chattering sound was back, and he noticed that Rodney's lower jaw was shaking against his teeth.

"Why don't I run you a bath?" John said. "A hot bath."

But Rodney's eyes had closed again.

John stood up. He looked around Rodney's room. There was Rodney's desk, with a laptop on it, a stack of papers, an anglepoise lamp. He bent down to peer at the framed picture, two people whom he didn't recognise. A lone paperclip lay at an angle to the edge of the desk. It occurred to John that he was noticing the paperclip because everything else in Rodney's room was arranged at right angles. Everything obeyed some inner geometry.

Funny. John had maybe expected Rodney's room to be messier, things strewn about, shoes to stumble over. But it was a very neat room. Rodney's blue-and-beige non-combat jacket was airing on a hanger, hooked onto the window handle. An unchewed apple rested on the nightstand.

"Okay, then," John whispered. "Good night, then."

But as the door hissed open, Rodney said, "Uh", and John turned around and looked into Rodney's dot-like pupils and found he couldn't just leave him there.

In the end, John made a flying visit to his own room, fetched his own mattress and bedded down on the floor next to Rodney.

***

"You know," Rodney said, with the ventilation humming and the shadows moving into the corners of the room, "it was not good in there."

"I can imagine," said John into the darkness. He had turned off the lights. Starshine glimmered on the air. No moon, of course.

"It was dark," said Rodney.

"Right," said John.

"And very small, very confined. I really, really... I'm not very good in confined spaces."

"No. Well, I can imagine. But you're out now."

"And there was something else. There was someone else there with me."

"Griffin?"

"No, good god, no. Oh god, that poor man."

Maybe John shouldn't have mentioned Griffin. It was not good to mention the dead too soon, or to think about what Griffin's remains were doing in the vastness of that prehistoric ocean.

"It was somebody else. Well, more like a hallucination, really."

"A hallucination?"

"Yes." The _yes_ came out in a wobble, so John knew that Rodney was still shivering. "A vision. It sounds crazy; it was crazy. It was Colonel Carter."

"Really?" John lay perfectly still. The smell of gunpowder bit the insides of his nostrils.

"Sam Carter."

"It's not that hard to believe." John swallowed. "I saw someone once."

The mattress squeaked. "You did?"

"In Afghanistan. It wasn't so different from what you experienced."

"What was it?" said Rodney's voice.

"Well," said John. He paused. The ceiling was still, the air placid. "I was stuck in this burrow, under fire. Hole in a ground, really. I couldn't come out. It was maybe a day, a day and a night, before they could come and get me."

"A day? A whole day and night?"

"And this other guy appeared and started talking to me. Guy called Mitch. Is that what happened to you?"

"Yes, talking, that is precisely..."

"Except I knew this guy to be dead. So I knew he wasn't for real. But he seemed real at the time. I'd seen him get blown up. He liked to make jokes about it, used to say, 'when I go kerplooie'. And pretend he was in a comic strip; kerboom, kerplooie. Then it really happened." John fell silent.

"The strange thing is..." Rodney sounded almost like a shadow of the former Rodney; almost. "She wanted to kiss me. She did kiss me, she took her top off."

"Wow, Rodney." John couldn't help laughing, just a little, but it was a broken laugh. "Huh. Mitch never did that for me."

"I am losing it, I am so losing it. I was losing it in there, you know, sinking into the ocean and trying to save the jumper and then fantasizing about kissing Sam Carter. How would that help anything? We had water up to our chins, I couldn't even feel the bottom, we had to hold onto the luggage racks. I thought: what if I never get out of here? What a way to go."

"Hey." John knelt up and touched Rodney on the shoulder again. Rodney was shaking. Shaking still, or shaking again, who could tell, but shaking. Shaking violently, so violently that John wanted to be violent in turn; wanted to slap him or punch him to stop the shaking. Wanted to make him go kerplooie.

"She..." Rodney said, teeth chattering so hard that John couldn't understand the rest of the sentence.

"Listen," John said. He was starting to shake, himself, now. He forced his touch to stay light, his hand to rest lightly on Rodney's shoulder. "Mitch," he began, but that sounded wrong. Also, he didn't want to talk about Mitch, or remember Mitch's scorched face leering at him from the corner of that hole in the ground.

He didn't want to think about Mitch pulling his face into grimaces and saying, 'bang, pow, kerboom', over and over again in that crazy darkness.

"I know, rationally, that I am not down there anymore," said Rodney, and then another violent attack of shivers shook him.

"Move over," said John.

"What?"

But John was already shoving Rodney against the far side of the mattress, shoving him with more force than necessary, shoving hard to stop his own limbs from shaking out of control. The bed was very narrow, there wasn't much room for two people. Rodney's arm was squashed against John's torso, his skin was clammy. John felt for Rodney's forehead, hit his nose instead, Rodney going "wha... ouch"; then he found it, cold and sweating.

"You'll never get warm like this," John mumbled and wrapped his arm around the top of Rodney. He wrapped it so hard that he squeezed a startled sigh out of Rodney.

John rubbed Rodney's shoulder, the top of his arm, the sides of his arm. The other arm was trapped between them. He smoothed the hospital gown across Rodney's back. He felt the skin tighten and convulse; he felt the muscles go into short spasms.

"You've got to relax," he murmured. "You've got to stop this shaking." ' _Yes, you've got to_ ', whispered an echo in his own head, ' _you have got to stop._ '

"I am trying," snapped Rodney. A little bit of his old irritability was back. And that was good, that helped.

"Fine," John said into Rodney's hair, "keep doing that. Keep trying." ' _And I will, too._ '

Because you've just got to, haven't you. You've just got to go on.

From Rodney, there came a burst of teeth chattering.

John bent down and kissed Rodney's mouth.

He didn't find it at first. His lips landed on the side of Rodney's nose but he trailed them downwards, across Rodney's upper lip, and left them there. Rodney's lips trembled underneath his. He could feel the teeth pressing against his own, chattering against his own teeth through the flesh of the gum.

John opened his mouth and pushed the tip of his tongue against Rodney's lips.

Rodney made a strange throaty sound.

Then Rodney opened his mouth and John was in.

It wasn't strange at all. It was the weirdest thing John had ever done. It was like parking the jumper in home bay. It was like entering an alien world. It was like the first time the city had responded under John's fingertips.

Before he knew it, John was kissing Rodney as if he were the last man on earth, in long, wild strokes of the tongue, moving his mouth across Rodney's lips and his head in delirious circles around Rodney's head.

Rodney's teeth had stopped chattering.

Rodney's shoulder was warm and round under John's arm, Rodney's torso firm and compact, Rodney's feet, slippers and all, felt-tipped against John's shin.

Whole aeons went by. John lifted his lips.

Rodney had stopped shaking.

And John no longer needed to.

He laughed, a high, nervous laugh. He was aware of himself and of the narrowness of the bed and of the girth and weight of Rodney next to him.

He tried to think of something to say but couldn't come up with anything, not anything at all.

But speech wasn't needed, it seemed, because before he was able to formulate even a 'hm', Rodney's mouth was on his again and Rodney's tongue was wiping away his thoughts. And then the whole of Rodney was on him, the entire body, torso, arms, legs and yes, in the centre, Rodney's hard cock. All of this was on him and around him, arms around his head, against his ears, and the lapels of the hospital gown flapping into his face.

There was a sound of open spaces. Wind rushed against the windowpanes of Rodney's room.

"Oh," said Rodney, and it was too much, it wasn't enough.

John was moving against him. It was like a reflex, like an auto-response to the weight on his chest and groin. He couldn't stop it, his body was doing it for him. And it was such an obvious movement, but what else was to be done with Rodney desperate in his arms?

' _Hang on_ ,' he wanted to say, ' _you're okay, you'll be fine_ ', but he couldn't because Rodney was shutting him up, wild and restless in his mouth, wild and reckless against his body.

Their hard-ons had met when? A long time ago, forever ago, too late to go back. They were fused together now by something beyond will. Beyond John's will, anyhow, and Rodney-- Rodney appeared to have lost his will some hours ago.

"Rodney," John gasped, "stop..."

The blanket was in a heap underneath them. The pillow had slipped off the bed, the mattress was like a boat upon the waves, the room was drowning them in tides of lust.

"Don't stop," sighed John. And came.

He seemed to come forever. Spurt after hot spurt, hiccupping ragged breaths against Rodney's neck, clutching Rodney's waist. How had this gone so far so fast?

One thing, though: Rodney was shaking again. But not with chill this time. His skin was as hot as stone in the sun. He was shaking because he was leaving come all over the front of John's pyjama pants.

Nobody said anything after that.

Air moved in the corners of the room. The mattress creaked.

Rodney's nose was buried in the fabric of John's T-shirt. His head rose and fell in time with John's gulped breaths.

John lifted his arm. He was amazed he had the strength. He let it hover above Rodney for a bit, then settled it across Rodney's back.

Rodney was perfectly still. He wasn't shaking. He was heavy.

He was asleep.

Hours later, John woke up to a hazy sun. There was a moist patch on his chest. Rodney was still in the same position. He had left a pool of drool on John's T-shirt.

John stretched his toes and wondered what to do. His body felt stiff under Rodney's. Stiff, warm and...

Hard again. Hard against Rodney's pelvis.

Rodney opened half an eye. The eye was only a few inches away from John's chin. John peered down at it. Rodney's pupils were no longer dot-like; they were large and round. Rodney's torso was solid, it was whole.

Somewhere, tangled in the sheets of John's mattress on the floor, an earphone began squawking.

\----

The End.  
31 March 2006; revised 9 April 2006  
All original parts © to Lobelia.  
(LJ: <http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/434488.html>">)

This page: http://archiveofourown.org/works/184372 


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